Physical insights of body effect and charge degradation in floating-body DRAMs

•A simple analytical model for the body-effect in FBRAMs is proposed.•Physical insights of the body effect and charge degradation mechanisms are discussed.•Conclusions can be useful for the choice and the optimization of the bias in FBRAMs.•All the discussion is supported by 2D-DD device simulation on a template DG-MOSFET.

Floating Body one transistor Dynamic Random Access Memories (FBRAMs) have been widely studied and proposed in the literature as an alternative for conventional one transistor/one capacitor DRAMs. FBRAM performance depends on charge degradation during READ and HOLD operations and on the body effect during READ operation, the first setting the amount of the residual non-equilibrium charge during READ operation, and the second setting the effectiveness of this residual charge to modulate the source-body barrier during READ operation. In this work it is proposed a simple analytical charge-based compact model for the body-effect in FBRAMs which is able to reproduce device performance in terms of READ Sense Margin and current ratio. Physical insights of the body effect and charge degradation mechanisms, with particular emphasis to their bias dependence, are discussed in detail. Conclusions can be useful for the choice and the optimization of the bias in FBRAMs. All the discussion is supported by two-dimensional drift–diffusion device simulation on a template double-gate MOSFET.